Beyond Progressive Enhancement

The time is 2020. The inflection point has long passed. Most web traffic is now coming from some manner of portable device. And if Google Chairman Eric Schmidt (and many others’) predictions have come true, we will have truly reached time where “…[technology] will just be seamless. It will just be there. The web will be everything, and it will be nothing. It will be like electricity.”

This presentation challenges us to think about the role of the web going forward. What steps must we take to build a world where interactions with the web are truly “seamless”? What would a seamless web even look like? How can we ensure the web remains strong amidst all the new technologies that are on the way.

One Response to Beyond Progressive Enhancement

I love this topic because I take the opposing viewpoint – why do we need a seamless web and how many people even want one?

I for one don’t. I have a smart phone and I keep those smart features switched off. I don’t download apps. I’m all too aware of how all this “wonderful” technology has become a greater and greater threat to our privacy and quite frankly I’m not having it. Facebook can’t even keep the viruses out or create programs that are free from hacking. Technology is no good if its created and run by techie morons or worse. And quite frankly I couldn’t care less what the chairman of Google thinks. I don’t use the service to search and I even refrain from using the name as a verb.

As a technologist, I don’t have a fear of technology because I know it’s just another tool and I use it often in its many forms. At the same time I don’t just snatch up a gadget because it is the latest thing. Who says that I would use it or even want it? Just because some geek in Silicon Valley thinks so? No.

There are already many others out there who are going farther – getting off the web completely, not texting constantly, and more. Making the web everywhere? Anyone thinking that’s what it will come to will be surprised at the level of pushback that will happen. Making the web everywhere will also increase its vulnerabilities in ways that are untraceable and truly disruptive.

Of course, I’m thinking “big picture” here but that’s what discussions like this prompt out of thinkers like me…